In other words, “#Si” (the sharp of the shi) becomes “Do” and “#Mi” (the sharp of the mi) becomes “Fa”. *Although you rarely see them, only the “c” and “mi” keys, which do not have a black key next to them on the right side, are played on the white key next to the right side when the semitone goes up. What is the flat sign The flat sign is written using the following symbol: It would sit on a music stave (staff USA) as follows: It would sit on a music. Similarly, “Do,” “Fa,” “So,” and “La” are also marked with a sharp (#), which means a semitone up, so they are the next black keys to the right. The corresponding keyboard keys are indicated by the blue circles in the figure below. In other words, if you have a score like the one below In the keyboard, it looks like the figure below.įor the sake of clarity, we consider the “le” sound to be the standard in this case.Īs you can see from the diagram, if you raise the “le” a semitone, it will be the black key right next to the “le”. The flat symbol () lowers the pitch of a note by a semitone, while the sharp symbol () raises the. These notes are used to modify the pitch of a note, and they are represented by symbols placed to the left of the notehead. Raising a semitone means, in plain English, changing one note to a higher note. Flat and sharp notes are fundamental concepts in music theory that every musician must understand.

Musical sharp and flat symbols